A very successful meeting took place on 20 August at Conway Hall organised by London & Eastern United Left.
We heard a number of reports, including very encouraging results from the Policy Conference on the union’s policy concerning Gaza (which was in fact simply a return to our existing policies). We hope this was a genuine attempt to put the last two years of obstruction and silence by the present leadership behind us, but many activists are not holding their breath. The General Secretary also gave solid assurances that the union’s 2021 accounts would be made available to Unite reps “within days“… like her similarly unfulfilled promise at the 2023 policy conference that that year’s accounts would be made available “shortly”. The silence is becoming deafening.
The meeting was interrupted at the start by a National Unite Officer and a member of London & Eastern Regional Committee, both devoted supporters of the existing undemocratic, witch-hunting regime in the union. They had come to the meeting, it appears, to find some witches … After it was pointed out to them that they had no right to be there, as they were not UL members, they “made their excuses and left.”
One of our members spoke about the histories of the legacy trades unions which had come together to form Unite, and periods in which some of those unions’ leaders had proscribed the left. She warned that Unite currently seemed to be hell-bent on following that destructive and divisive path, with its propaganda campaign of unsubstantiated smears and slanders against the United Left, disseminated regularly using the resources of the union.
Let us work to stop that happening – help “Reclaim our union’ for the members – join the United Left today.